NAB Needs To Get Spectrum Act Together

Yesterday, FCC Media Bureau Chief Bill Lake hosted a webinar for broadcasters to explain further the agency’s plan for encouraging marginal stations to give up spectrum and earn a share of the proceeds from the eventual auction of the spectrum to wireless broadband providers.

As the FCC has been doing since it first floated the so-called incentive auction idea in 2009, Lake reassured broadcasters that participation was strictly voluntary. At one point, he promised that in the post-auction repacking of the spectrum no station would be forced into the VHF band. That is reassuring, given that most stations consider VHF the electromagnetic equivalent of Tripoli right now.

Lake said the purpose of the online session — the first in a series — was to speak directly to broadcasters and to correct “wildly inaccurate” press accounts. (Tsk, tsk, all you other reporters.)

To some extent, Lake achieved his goal. With the help of his slides, he outlined the plan, answered many posted questions and promised answers to others. You began to see just how an incentive auction might work.

Of course, he couldn’t answer the biggest question: How much can I get for my station if I put it on the auction block? There are just way too many variables to get anywhere close to an answer to that this early in the process.

But despite Lake’s best efforts, the webinar reminded me of just how tricky this incentive auction business is. If you read our story about the considerable forces — from the White House to Silicon Valley — that have rallied around the plan, you know that this is going to happen.

The tall task for broadcasters is to make the incentive auction work for them just as they did the digital transition. There is a best-case scenario under which marginal stations walk away with big checks and the remaining stations continue broadcasting with more power and greater reach. Getting to that scenario will not be easy.

And there are plenty of worst-case scenarios. The FCC keeps talking about a win-win. But if the broadcasters aren’t careful, the plan could turn into a lose-lose. Broadcasters could lose their spectrum and fair compensation for it.

I don’t think it is an exaggeration to say that this spectrum reallocation initiative is the most critical issue that broadcasting has had to face in the past three decades, my time on the beat.

So it’s perplexing why the powers that be in the broadcasting industry would choose this time to disrupt its spectrum policy team.

First they began a search for a new top tech executive for the NAB without, I’m led to understand, telling the old top tech executive, Lynn Claudy. Not exactly great for the morale of the Science and Technology Department that Claudy leads.

Then, they voted just last week to shut down the Association for Maximum Service Television, which for the past 54 years has dutifully defended the turf of full-power TV stations and, far more often than not, won the day.

The decision to shutter MSTV has the effect of casting off David Donovan, its president for the past 10 years who has deftly guided the industry through the DTV transition and the white spaces battles.

Neither the NAB nor MSTV board feels that it needs to explain these moves. Transparency is apparently not among their virtues these days. It might have been about money. It was costing the industry $2.5 million a year to keep MSTV going. Or, it simply might have been a desire of the dominant NAB to consolidate efforts so that broadcasting could have a stronger voice.

But it doesn’t much matter now.

What does matter is that the NAB put together a new team that can track developments closely and negotiate the deals on Capitol Hill and at the FCC that lead to the best-case scenario.

That starts with the hiring of that new tech exec. The right person keeps broadcasting in the game. The wrong person puts it on the same grim road as newspapers.

The winning candidate, as they say, is thoroughly knowledgeable about all the new digital media and brings ideas about how broadcasters can exploit them. This is something that the NAB has lacked for a long time. Right now, for instance, there is no concerted industry effort to exploit the new OTT platform. It’s inexcusable.

But he or she had also better understand spectrum policy or be smart enough the pick it up quickly — and not just because of the FCC spectrum plan. If there is one thing that the media world agrees upon today it is that the future belongs to wireless, in one form or another.

The good news is that NAB’s new technologist will be backed by Victor Tawil and Bruce Franca, MSTV’s two spectrum experts who will be joining NAB once MSTV is finally put to sleep. They not only know spectrum, but also know the people at the FCC who manage it.

Donovan will be missed. Nobody was better able to dissect complex FCC technical proposals and pinpoint where the troubles for broadcasters were. He was also able to form and articulate the substantive arguments. That still matters, even though the cynics say it’s all about money and politics.

That is not to say that Donovan was above politicking. He knows how Washington works. And, by all accounts, he still had stroke at the FCC where he began his career.

Look, you can spend two hours listening to an FCC official talking about the incentive auction, but you really won’t know what was said and what it means to you and your station until you have talked to Donovan or someone like him.

It’s my hope — and should be yours — that he soon reemerges in a role where he can continue to influence the spectrum debate and champion the broadcasting cause.

Harry A. Jessell is editor of TVNewsCheck. He can be contacted at 973-701-1067 or [email protected]. You can read his other columns here.